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These Harvard kids got the lesson of their life in the Heartland
The NY Post ^ | June 16,2018 | By Salena Zito

Posted on 06/16/2018 11:46:50 PM PDT by Hojczyk

On a blustery afternoon in April, I filed into a van along with 10 students from Harvard. We had just spent the last two days in Chicopee, Mass., where we had chatted with the police chief and his force, the mayor and his staff, small-business owners, waitresses and firemen about their struggles living in small-town America.

The undergrads were buzzing with their impressions. Chicopee is about 90 miles west of their prestigious university in Cambridge, but when it comes to shared experience, it might as well have been 1,000 light years away.

As they settled in, I looked at them.

“So,” I said, “who do you think most of the people you just got to know voted for president?”

None of the students had an answer. It hadn’t come up in their conversations and they didn’t know I had privately asked each person who they’d voted for.

So, I let a minute pass and told them.

“Nearly every one of them voted for Trump.”

My students looked stunned, at first. But then a recognition crossed their faces.

We were only a few days into a new course I had developed with Harvard’s Institute of Politics, called the Main Street Project, where students are immersed in small-town America. Even though these kids had almost all been raised in the United States, our journey sometimes felt like an anthropology course, as though they were seeing the rest of the country for the first time. And this was their opening lesson.

I have been a national political journalist for nearly 15 years. Whenever and wherever I travel in this country, I abide by a few simple rules: No planes, no interstates and no hotels.

And definitely no chain restaurants.

(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Politics/Elections; US: Massachusetts
KEYWORDS: deplorables; mainstreetproject; rural; zito
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1 posted on 06/16/2018 11:46:50 PM PDT by Hojczyk
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To: Hojczyk

Good article...why the MSM missed the election...


2 posted on 06/16/2018 11:48:49 PM PDT by Hojczyk
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To: Hojczyk
no hotels.

Let them stay at a Motel 6 and take them to the local walmart if they want to see the regular folks. A bed and breakfast is generally not a microcosm of the locals.

3 posted on 06/16/2018 11:58:20 PM PDT by BBell (not drinking, just a smart a$$)
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To: BBell
Let them stay at a Motel 6

I would fail the course before I stayed in a motel 6.

4 posted on 06/17/2018 12:07:38 AM PDT by Jeff Chandler (President Trump divides Americans . . . from anti-Americans.)
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To: Jeff Chandler

Soooo, you don’t like “slumming it,” do you? LOL


5 posted on 06/17/2018 12:10:28 AM PDT by txnativegop (The political left, Mankinds intellectual hemlock)
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To: Jeff Chandler

Same here.


6 posted on 06/17/2018 12:18:21 AM PDT by BBell (not drinking, just a smart a$$)
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To: Jeff Chandler

Me either nowadays

And at sixty and beat up I only fly first class....six five 235

I’ll fly southeast for shirt junkets

That’s it

I figure I’ve paid my dues....

I’ll splurge on fancy hotels in cities

On the road I’m happy with Home2Suites or Best Western

Spring Hill suites is ok too and Drury Inn

I won’t stay Motel 6 or Red Roof or Kinights Inn or Super 8 or Days Inn or Best Value unless there are no rooms


7 posted on 06/17/2018 12:19:08 AM PDT by wardaddy (Hanged not hung.)
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To: BBell

C7

Great minds yet again


8 posted on 06/17/2018 12:20:03 AM PDT by wardaddy (Hanged not hung.)
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To: Hojczyk

What a bunch of lamo punks. These kids will crawl back into their bubble, assume a fetal position and suck their thumbs for the rest of their lives.


9 posted on 06/17/2018 12:21:27 AM PDT by HighSierra5
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To: Hojczyk

In one regard, I fully understand why Mao hated ivory-tower intellectuals, mocked them, and made them objects of scorn during his Cultural Revolution.


10 posted on 06/17/2018 12:21:59 AM PDT by PGR88
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To: Hojczyk

The irony is that the guy who did figure it all out is a billionaire New York City real estate developer.


11 posted on 06/17/2018 12:24:50 AM PDT by Billthedrill
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To: Billthedrill

Trump is, like FDR, born into wealth but able to relate to the common man.


12 posted on 06/17/2018 12:35:47 AM PDT by MCF (If my home can't be my Castle, then it will be my Alamo.)
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To: Hojczyk

We, on the other hand, don’t need an antrhopology course or to give the National Geographic Safari treatment to leftist bubbles, it’s shoved in our faces daily via every single media outlet. We know for a fact that leftist urbanites are narrow-minded and don’t have a clue about anyone who is not like themselves, because they’ve segregated themselves. They only believe the best of people just like them, and they only think the worst of “those people.” It’s just like Jim Crow, only they’re the Klansmen and the Bull Connors now, and they hate the majority of the people of their own country. But we’re the biased ignorant ones, or so they believe. I’m beginning to understand how bloody revolutions became inevitable, in France and elsewhere. They’re really insufferable but oh so smugly certain that they know what’s best for people they despise.


13 posted on 06/17/2018 12:37:32 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: Hojczyk

Most of these elites have never done a hard days work ever. I would have been more impressed if they’d have gone out to Ted Nugents place or spent two weeks on a working ranch or farm


14 posted on 06/17/2018 12:51:45 AM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
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To: Jeff Chandler

There plenty of good Motel 6


15 posted on 06/17/2018 12:53:15 AM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
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To: wardaddy

Most of these kids have never done a hard days work in their short lives


16 posted on 06/17/2018 12:54:12 AM PDT by Nifster (I see puppy dogs in the clouds)
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To: Nifster

I could tell you stories about Motel 6.

The pity is they were clean, safe motels — at one time.

Now, three stars is my minimum.


17 posted on 06/17/2018 12:57:49 AM PDT by Jeff Chandler (President Trump divides Americans . . . from anti-Americans.)
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To: MCF
FDR, born into wealth but able to relate to the common man.

Bless your heart.

18 posted on 06/17/2018 12:59:44 AM PDT by Jeff Chandler (President Trump divides Americans . . . from anti-Americans.)
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To: BBell
Let them stay at a Motel 6 and take them to the local walmart if they want to see the regular folks. A bed and breakfast is generally not a microcosm of the locals.

Exactly wrong.

Motel 6 is a corporate thing that views the local folks in terms of charts and graphs at some HQ far removed. Same for Walmart.

A bed and breakfast, in contrast, is a small business actually run by locals. HQ is the breakfast table! If you truly want to understand what's going on in that neck of the woods, the bed and breakfast proprietors are an ideal starting point.

19 posted on 06/17/2018 1:08:41 AM PDT by cynwoody
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To: Jeff Chandler

Sure but at least they leave the light on for ya.


20 posted on 06/17/2018 1:11:49 AM PDT by billyboy15 (S re)
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